I am a superhero.

Lately, my Stark (obviously already a superhero) has been referring to me as a Super Woman. While we joke about my Pepper Potts status simply by association, it’s never been something I felt I fully emulated. She’s an amazing business woman and CEO. She’s also fantastically fit, calm, and well composed. I think on most days, I have the business part down. The fantastically fit, calm, and well composed aspects have only been recent additions to my life… Sorta.

But it occurred to me today that I truly have the standard superhero back story. I mean my life is true origin story material. Youngest child – practically a second family I was so much younger than my siblings. I had a hellish set of teenage years being emotionally, verbally, and even physically abused by peers. Kids are mean. There’s no more words that need to be added to that story. We all know it. They’re just rotten. Then, without warning and after a semi dramatic night, my mom suddenly passes away that one time I just refused to say, “Goodnight, I love you too.” Bam! 15 minutes later my entire life changes and I spend a year bouncing around half a dozen places to live while no one really seemed to want or know what to do with me. So I went out on my own. Away. I raised myself. I didn’t always do it right and it certainly was never easy. I grew thick skin. I’ve had the heartaches and fights of any other superhero story. I was prime time for the type of person the CIA should want to recruit straight out of high school. Blazing IQ, bad attitude, and nothing to lose. Where was Professor X when I needed somewhere to go? Where was my Logan? My random protector? My Hugh Jackman? In the end, I upgraded something major and here I am living the life of a Stark. But even Pepper has her stories…

Stark has been acknowledging my household stardom as of late because I’ve had this ridiculous ability to be done with my day by the time he even starts. For weeks on end I was up for 6 or 7am meetings, upgrading my webcam prowess to mobile headphones. I had my coffee made, my meetings had, my protein shake mixed, my vitamins taken, a 5k ran, and a hefty set of weight lifting all done my 11am. I was on a roll!

Despite traveling to Indonesia, I kept up my routine. Despite my dad coming into town to visit, I was still managing 3-4 hours of meetings in the morning, 13 kilometers of daily on-foot tourism, a visit to the gym, healthy eating, home cooking, and wrapping up work at night. But THAT was a bit too much. I made it through Monday of this week before I broke.

Now, I’m having a hard time even allowing myself to see this as anything but a failure. When you’re biggest sense of pride is how long you’ve kept a routine going, a hard reset is the last thing you need. So I’m trying to talk myself out of believing it is the end of my world and I’ve failed my life miserably. Did I mention I can be extremely hard on myself?

Even Pepper has bad days and I’m sure she makes bad decisions. I’m sure, like me, she has these set backs and resets. Not even superheroes are able to juggle everything all at once flawlessly, especially a Stark! I should know that.

After all, tomorrow is another day. It is another morning. And it is a chance for me to balance once again.